


My Empty Body

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [43]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:45:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6253486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: any, any, take my empty body and discover me, infinity. John lets his imprints run loose on a designated Sunday after he comes clean with the Atlantis Expedition. Set in Season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Empty Body

These days, John couldn't sleep. He wasn't known for his patience or his stillness, as Teer would have been well able to attest while she was trying to teach him to meditate. He wasn't as fidgety as some other people, but he didn't like to be lazy. And the lull in Atlantis the past few weeks was unsettling. He was a soldier. He was used to being on constant alert, ready for danger. There were Wraith, there were Genii, there were well-meaning but hapless Pegasus coalition members trying to screw things up for Atlantis and endanger its inhabitants.  
  
For the last little while, the biggest danger hadn't come from any of those threats – it had come from inside Atlantis, from Sergeant Ceccoli and his technological ambitions, from Rodney and Lorne's well-meaning eavesdropping, and from John's confession. The external serenity was unsettling, and John couldn't sleep.  
  
Everyone had tried to be supportive. Ronon seemed as uncaring of John's revelation as he had been before, when he'd seen glimpses of Traci knitting or doing yoga or Architect drawing or Songwriter playing guitar. Zelenka was careful to speak only English around John, which meant once or twice he'd cut himself off in the middle of a tirade in Czech, to the puzzlement of the other scientists around him.  
  
Teyla offered to accompany him on any sojourn he wished to make. After he'd explained that one of his imprints was transgender, a concept for which there was no Athosian parallel, she'd taken it upon herself to be his girl talk BFF should the need ever arise, which it hadn't.  
  
Woolsey kept making random demands designed to require John to use skills or knowledge belonging to the other imprints, like tasking him with helping Rodney solve a math and physics problem, or assisting the engineers with some renovations to part of the city that had been flooded, or even translation with some of the international expedition members whose English was a little shakier than others'. He was trying to prove to himself - or maybe someone else - that John wasn't a liability after all.  
  
Keller kept coming up with reasons to drop by and check on him, just say hi, see how he was feeling.  
  
Lorne acted like nothing had changed, like John was still the John Sheppard Lorne had always known and served with, and he made no mention of Joe.  
  
And Rodney...Rodney was avoiding him.  
  
John hated it, because he remembered the love and acceptance Rodney had offered when John confessed to him for the first time, when Rodney's mind was failing and John's last-ditch attempt at holding onto him was to tell him he loved him.  
  
John hated it, and he was agitated, and all his imprints were agitated, and he couldn't sleep.  
  
So he didn't.  
  
He lay in the darkness, trying to count sheep, trying to meditate like English Teacher suggested, but it wasn't working. He rolled to his feet and went into the bathroom to see about taking a warm shower. That would help him relax. Only he caught his reflection in the mirror, and he stared. Where Rodney had seen him, Foxtrot John Sheppard, now he saw only...emptiness. A doll. A hollow thing where an infinite number of ghosts could be stored and called up at will, ghosts meant to be used and tossed aside. That was how his makers had designed him, and that was how Rodney saw him.  
  
But he wasn't that. Not anymore. He was himself. He was every single one of those people, and he was something more. He was a dozen lifetimes and one soldier in another galaxy from home.  
  
John stared at his face, at what was once Joe's face and now was his face, and he decided, _Screw it_.  
  
So he went on a rampage.  
  
It was his designated Sunday tomorrow. He could do whatever the hell he wanted. So he did.

He started with some of Traci's yoga. Then he turned on her music and danced. He whipped out a pair of mittens using big needles and chunky yarn and left them outside Keller's door. He found an empty room and papered it with sketches of his dream bachelor pad from his imaginary trip home that first year in Atlantis. He found an empty balcony and hopped up on the railing, guitar in hand, and serenaded Atlantis with "Under the Bridge", because _the city she loves me_. On another balcony he recited the Declaration of Independence from memory. He played a single round of beer pong with some off-duty marines, officers from the most recent wave of new recruits to the expedition. He practiced his golf swing and he tumbled through a myriad other of his imprints' hobbies and skills, because they were him and he was them and he could do it all, so he would.  
  
He ended his rampage through his skills and hobbies and talents in the cramped little room beside the archives, where the Archivist kept certain big-ticket common items, like the electric piano. John sat there in the dark, eyes closed, and played. Rhapsody in Blue, because even though Pianist had functioned as a player at a piano bar, he'd trained as a concert pianist, and he was worth more than a thousand and one renditions of Billy Joel's Piano Man.  
  
But it had been a long time since he'd played, and halfway through his hands faltered. He lifted his hands off the keys, took a deep breath, waiting, scanning. The law clerk with the eidetic memory was no good, because the piano music had been in Braille.  
  
And then someone else took up the song.  
  
John opened his eyes, confused, surprised. Rodney was standing behind him, leaning over him, one hand on the keys, carefully not touching him.  
  
How had John not noticed him?  
  
Rodney glanced at him, asking, waiting, and John nodded, slid over. And then Rodney took up the song, and his hands were as hesitant, as fumbling as John's had been, but he made it through the rest of the song, and after the final notes hung in the air, they sat in silence.  
  
After the final notes died, they sat side by side, John hyperaware of Rodney's warmth, Rodney saying nothing.  
  
Rodney nudged him, lifted his hand to the keys, and trilled through the first few bars of Blue Moon.  
  
John picked up the lower half of the childhood duet.  
  
And they played together, and it wasn't the same as Rodney loving him, accepting him, but it was close enough, and it would be all right.


End file.
